The Golden Wrench

A blog about bicycle repair and maintenance by the mechanics at Freewheel Bike.

Saturday, May 8, 2010

I Missed Us (even if no one else did)

OK, so we have officially climbed out from under the spring landslide (or, Spring Landslide if you prefer proper nouns) and unofficially have time to blog again.

Lots of neat things have happened since last we wrote: for example, I now have a sweet tire lever that shouldn't break anytime soon, unlike the blue ones which seem to go *bang* at awkward moments (such as when Maury the Trek rep is walking through the line of fire). It's red, and looks like candy, but isn't as far as I can tell.

Other neat things which have happened include:
  • New magazines have appeared in the restroom! Now when we go "rest" we don't have to read about Lance's comeback unless we want to!
  • The tub of Pro Soap has become nearly empty, which is OK, because we have four more of them!
  • We replaced our automatic parts washer with one where you have to scrub the parts and actually earn your wages! Now the factory finish doesn't come off of some parts unless you really scrub at them!
  • We received pairs of yellow dishpan gloves and all fight over the "large" ones, even though they're still too small for most of us! The phrase "Large Woman Hands" became an instant classic.
  • We have seen some really cool bikes come and go (but I usually [though not always] forgot to get a picture)
  • One Saturday morning, we actually listened to a Bach/Vivaldi station on Pandora for four hours, and enjoyed it!
  • We got a new dustpan!
Of the cool bikes that have come in, here are a few:
Here's a Scott Rubicon. As you can see, it firms up when you stand up, and your legs grow shorter when you go over bumps. And yes, as you have guessed, it weighs more than most third graders. And, indeed, if you forget to install one of the linkage parts when you overhaul it, you will have no place to sit or run your cables. Can you pick out which linkage part that would be?

Here's a venerable, steel Cinelli mountain bike, complete with the circuit trace paint job. I 'bout swooned when I saw this one come in. It had seen better days to be sure, but it's still a Cinelli. I took my hat off and drafted a quick sonnet (it wasn't all that good).

Anyways, we're back on line and will have more goodies for you to snicker at in the near future!